The invention relates to a device for simulating a collision of a motor vehicle with a laterally impacting impactor, composed of: a seat carriage which can be displaced in the transverse direction of the vehicle and on which a seat unit with an anthropomorphous crash test dummy and, if appropriate, various other components (for example safety devices) is mounted, a side component carriage which can be displaced in the transverse direction of the vehicle and on which a side component of the motor vehicle body, and if appropriate various other components, is mounted, and an impactor which is intended to act on the side component and which comprises an acceleration device, the seat carriage and the side component carriage being displaceable independently of one another.
When collisions occur in which a motor vehicle collides with one of its sides with a flat obstacle (also referred to as a barrier, for example the front part of another vehicle), the obstacle pushes a component of the side of the motor vehicle (a door or a side wall) into the passenger compartment of the vehicle where said component consequently pushes against the seat unit. The vehicle occupants therefore can be injured not only by the acceleration forces or inertia forces but also by the collision with the pressed-in motor vehicle side components. For this reason, test which are intended for testing the side components of the vehicle and the restraint systems which are provided for protecting the vehicle occupants (for example seat belts and side airbags) are prescribed. These tests are essentially crash tests with a barrier which represents another motor vehicle with which the test vehicle collides, and the subject of a series of regulations. Examples which may be mentioned are the following regulations or consumer safety tests: FMVSS214, EWG/EG 96/27, ECE-R95, US-LINCAP, EURO-NCAP, JAPAN-NCAP, IIHS side crash.
When developing vehicles, equivalent tests are frequently carried out in order to avoid the need to check the influence of certain structural changes by means of a crash test.
A device for carrying out such equivalent tests is known from U.S. Pat. No. 5,485,758. In said document, the seat carriage, side component carriage and the impactor are moveably guided in the transverse direction of the vehicle on an underlying surface which is provided with rails. In order to carry out a test, the impactor is firstly moved so far away from the test specimen, counter to the force of a spring, that the force of the spring which is stressed in the process corresponds to the acceleration which will give the collision speed to be simulated. Furthermore, the influences of all the components which are omitted from the test have to be taken into account for an informative test. For this purpose, acceleration profiles of the seat carriage and of the side component carriages are acquired either by means of a test with the entire vehicle or by calculation using the method of finite elements. In order to be able to reproduce these acceleration profiles, too, during the test, it is necessary for bodies which consume energy, have a damping or braking effect or shatter at a defined force to be mounted at various locations in numerous preliminary tests (“adjustment tests”), and said bodies are frequently successfully adjusted only by performing trials. During these very numerous tests, side components, doors, lining components, seat belts, airbags and seat units are destroyed, which makes these preliminary tests not only time-consuming but also very expensive.
An object of the invention is thus to provide a test device in which these preliminary tests can be dispensed with or can be at least drastically reduced.